The UK’s new regulatory competitiveness and growth objective

Martin Mankabady (Eversheds Sutherland, London) |

Introduction

The UK’s Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 came into force in August 2023 and, amongst other things, provided for the UK’s regulators, the Prudential Regulation Authority (‘PRA’) and the Financial Conduct Authority (‘FCA’), to have as a secondary statutory objective a competitiveness and growth objective.

Both the PRA and the FCA have each recently separately published a report on the progress which they have made to date in advancing this objective. Each of their responses was broadly along the lines that it is still early days yet but that a number of examples of different initiatives can already be pointed to where this objective is having an impact.

What is more, the Bank of England’s Independent Evaluation Office has also recently reported on the PRA’s performance to date, and, whilst it made a number of recommendations, its overall feedback was positive.

In